


de novo

by orphan_account



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, POV Second Person, Pining, Time Skips, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 04:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: de novo (adverb).  starting from the beginning; anew.sometimes, these things take time.





	de novo

**Author's Note:**

> i've never really posted anything i've written before this. it's unbetaed (sorry if it's illegible)
> 
> hope you enjoy xx

You're twelve when you meet the love of your life. You haven't seen his face, you don't even know what love is yet but one day, that's what you'll remember this as.

You're a child, so is he. Over months, years, your feelings intensify and suddenly you know what love is. Things happen, you talk less and you think that maybe digital love isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Besides, you're a coward. You know who you are, and that person will never ever let him know just how you feel.

You hate yourself for it.

 

 

School is school and soon there's other loves. Drunk, sloppy, childish kisses stolen in the dark when you both escape the heat of the party together. It feels wrong, you think to yourself, and remember his smile, the sound of his laugh interspersed with crackling from the shitty phone connection. That night, you call him and you talk for hours. By the end, you're half delirious and can barely keep your eyes open but somehow you feel clean. You think, deep down, that maybe one day you can be happy.

The first time you meet face to face the world shrinks and it’s just you and him and nothing else in existence. You talk for hours, and when it’s time to go it’s as if you and him have become combined into one and the separation feels like a knife down your centre. He promises you he’ll see you again soon and you smile and wave and agree.

But you and him are like two magnets, or maybe that’s the wrong analogy. A string, a red string ties you together, keeps your lives in sync, pulls you back in whenever you move too far apart. You’re parallels, the perfect complement to each other and you rise as he does, inspiring each other, making each other better. Maybe fate is real, for you to have met someone like him. Not many people do in their lifetimes, but you brush the thought away. Fate doesn’t exist, can’t exist, because if it did it’s a cruel thing that you could be so close to this boy but he always hovers just the slightest bit out of your reach.

When people ask you what makes you the happiest in the world, you give one of two responses. Making music, or playing it live.  
There’s a third response you could give, but you never do.  
There’s one more thing that can make you happier than anything else and it’s the way Porter’s eyes light up when he’s enthusiastic, the way he smiles, the way he laughs.

Porter’s happiness is the third answer.

So of course, one day when he crashes and burns, you’re there by his side immediately. You there to say, hey do the thing that makes us both happy, but do it with me this time. Porter agrees and you feel your heart simultaneously catch on fire and break into a million pieces. But you’re glad, despite everything.

I love you, you say  
Porter grins. I love you too dude. So much.  
you know the rest of the story, even if Porter himself doesn’t.  
I love you, Porter says in your mind. but not in that way.

 

 

It’s the final show you will play with him for a very long time and you can’t quite describe how you feel about that. You’ve told yourself not to cry but right at the end of the encore your voice cracks and you only just manage the final line.

I’ll be okay. You force the words out of your throat, even though you know you won’t be.

You hug him and dig your fingers in as if doing that will let you hold on to this moment forever. In that instant in front of a crowd of tens of thousands of people the only ones who feel quite real are you and him. You put your head on his shoulder and you hear him sniffle a bit and right then you don’t think you’ve ever felt quite as much love as you do now. But you’ve been telling yourself for months that this is the end, this is it and you’re finally going to get over whatever this is-

Was.

 

 

There’s people to meet and things to consider and it’s not until hours after that you get a moment to yourselves, sitting on the end of the bed in Porter’s hotel room. You turn to him.

So this is it, you say. This is how it ends. You sigh.

Yeah, Porter says and you think that maybe he’s going to cry.

It was good.

It doesn’t have to end, the boy you have loved for years says,

But you know it does. You can’t continue living like this.  
You know he doesn’t love you, can never love you in the way he loves-

Porter leans forward and presses his lips to yours and every thought in your head is silenced at once as twenty thousand volts of electricity race through your veins. You can’t move, can’t think and as if in response to your lack of anything Porter pulls pack.

He motions as if to get up I’m sorry he says I’m sorry I thought-

You grab his t-shirt and pull him forward and you’re colliding with him in an array of dizzying red and everything is twisted but beautiful and so right and suddenly you both come up for air and you have no idea how you survived before this very moment. You’re starving for his touch, his warmth and you don’t know how much time passes before you hear a phone ring. It’s some anime op that you vaguely remember and you and he jolt away from each other. You motion across the room.

Should you get that? you question.

It’s probably not important, he says. You nod in acknowledgment, and put your head on his shoulder. Neither of you have slept in well over 20 hours, and every part of your body is drained. You absorb Porter’s warmth and you feel better, but more than anything it is finally being able to be as carelessly intimate as you’ve always wanted that makes your absolute weariness bearable. You no longer have to watch your every move, wondering if it’s too obvious, that one day he’ll figure it out and wouldn’t feel the same way and everything would be gone.

But it’s not.

I didn’t know you felt the same way, Porter says, you assume to explain why now, of all times. I didn’t even know that I felt that way, really but you remember the day you asked me to make a song with you? That one day everything just made sense and I realised-  
I realised that I love you. But I was so sure you didn’t feel the same way and I couldn’t… I couldn’t bring myself to wreck what we’ve already got.

But you said you were going to go. That this would be the end and I thought that I had nothing more left to lose. I need you, Hugo.

You want to cry, maybe, but it’s not a bad thing.

I need you too, you say back. You want to say more but the words are getting caught in your throat and you don’t think you can manage to choke them out and from the look on Porter’s face he knows exactly what you’re going to say.

You hold yourself back and say instead, But how is this going to work?

You don’t say her name, but it hangs heavy in the air between them. You love Porter, you do but you can’t do that to another person, or to yourself.

I didn’t think that far ahead, he admits, but maybe we can work something out.

Not right now, you whisper into his neck. In the morning. You peck his cheek lightly, the way you’ve always done, and stand up from the bed and turn towards the door but this time it’s him who pulls you back.

Don’t leave. Stay. Whatever this is we can figure it out and maybe it won’t work out, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave.

You cave. There’s nothing your body needs or wants more than to collapse right next to him and fall into unconsciousness for whatever small period of time is left until the sun rises.

You flop on to the bed next to him, and you’ve never felt more safe or comfortable in your life. He rolls over onto his side and you put your arm around him. It feels natural, like this is how the universe is meant to be, or even how it’s been all along but you can finally, finally see it.

It feels right.

You lightly kiss the back of his neck, and close your eyes.

 

 

***

One morning, a twelve year old boy in Nantes, France posts a response to a user going by the name of ekowraith on a Daft Punk message board. It’s the beginning of a relationship that will change both of their lives.

More than ten years and nearly 10 000 km away, one boy kisses another and that relationship kind of stays the same but not really or maybe it becomes what it was meant to be all along


End file.
